This courageous physician blows a whistle on the human rights abuse in hospitals. Doctors forced to work 8 consecutive days. No sleep. No access to food. Doctor forced to work in ICU after having seizure. Is this the care you want in American hospitals?
Full transcript:
The hospital administration and the national hospitalist company that I worked for made this agreement that the shifts would be 24 hours. And they would …
Each year, over 20,000 U.S. students begin medical school. They routinely pay $50,000 or more per year for the privilege, and the average medical student graduates with a debt of over $170,000. That’s a lot of money. But for some who pursue careers in medicine, the financial cost has been considerably greater. Melissa Chen, 35, a final-year radiology resident at the …
“So, is this the sickest list you’ve ever had?” the resident asked me at 2 AM, after I finally finished checking off all my boxes for the night. I nodded. I agreed.
I was also shaking.
I had been covering nine patients that night. Almost none were stable. In the span of one shift, we called three rapid responses. One person went into cardiogenic shock right in front of me was transferred to …
We have heard ad nauseum that the data collection mandated by Medicare and Medicaid is to improve quality of care. Significant taxpayer dollars have been expended as bonuses in the name of PQRS (Physician Quality Reporting System). With all this investment and mandating, one would assume that the PQRS must be highly indicative of better quality of patient care, right? Not so fast.
Two recent reports demonstrate how ineffective this program is and how much physicians hate …
Since the first day of medical school, I was in breathless anticipation of my third year. I came to Harvard with a background in creative writing and the big draw of medicine for me lay in its compendium of human stories.
In college, I volunteered at local hospitals where my primary responsibility was to go knock on patients’ doors and keep them company for a little while. This was awesome. Few …
This mantra was accompanied by flushed faces, hidden trembling hands, and nervous chuckles as the majority of my peers told the class why they decided to pursue physical therapy as a career. Soon thereafter, this adage was lost as we dived into our studies, learning every bone, muscle, and organ. Focusing on the human body is a must for all healthcare professionals, and PTs …
We like to say good things; we try to make normative to our profession to do the things that should be done. Many of us are saying that physicians should be advocates for their patients and communities outside of the clinic.
Sounds good right? Unfortunately, what sounds good is not always a reality on the ground. I think most physicians agree that …
Watching my first below-the-knee amputation on my surgery rotation, I felt a curious mix of revulsion and detachment. The woman on the operating table had a gangrenous infection that had spread across her foot. Her long history of smoking and her delay in seeking medical care meant that she had stiff, black toes by the time a surgeon first saw her. The only treatment was amputation.
Mrs. C was used to my quiet knock every morning at 6 a.m. She smiled as I turned on the overhead lights, but began to grimace when she realized that today was dressing-change day. The rustling packages of bandages in my overstuffed coat pockets had given it away. Mrs. C had stage four metastatic endometrial cancer; a malignancy of her uterus that was not responding well to chemotherapy and had …
Most physicians can trace back and recall their first patient. For some, it is a clinical encounter the third or fourth year of medical school. The more creative may point to their cadaver during first year anatomy and nod knowingly. My first patient was a mouse. Or shall I say a group of them?
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school: not “pre-clinical” to “clinical,” but “pre-cynical” to “cynical.”
— Abraham Verghese, MD
The scalpel hovered over the swollen, red and inflamed mass peeking through the opening in the sterile drapes. The patient lay on her side facing away from us, clutching the stiff emergency room pillow against her face and moaning as she rocked back-and-forth. Whenever the surgeon manipulated the mass, …
When I was in my residency training, pharmaceutical reps still roamed the land. Vast herds of gorgeous young women in tight skirts and stilettos traveled through doctor’s offices, clinics, hospitals and residencies all over creation. Their appearance was always a thing of joy, especially for sleepy, hungry physicians-in-training. Someone would run to the …
Pamela sits on the examining-room stool, looking at me expectantly.
I am in my first year of medical school. I do as I’ve been told to do in medical skills class: I observe my patient — without judgment or assumptions — and try to figure out what questions to ask, based on the information I am given.
Pamela has curly, strawberry-blonde hair and looks to be thirty, just a few years older …
Life is full of choices and each choice has the potential to open certain doors and close others. I choose medicine. It is a demanding career, but even as a 7th grader, I knew what I was signing up for.
What I didn’t know was how much this profession could influence the trajectory of my personal life and the types of relationships I’m able to maintain. I grew up genuinely thinking …
Like most second-year medical students, I have the MP3 files of Goljan’s high yield pathology review lectures on my phone. Unlike most medical students, I rarely bring myself to listen to them, always opting for their Motown or punk counterparts instead. I often feel guilty about this — listening to them would make for more efficient car rides and walks home — …
A few months ago I was paged by a medical student in the emergency room at ten o’clock. I had just changed my clothes, and before my pager went off my attention had been squarely fixed on the newest Jack Reacher novel.
You can usually tell when someone is going to ask you to come into the hospital from home, because there …
Ironically, we had just finished our endocrine unit when I noticed a lump in my neck. Perhaps school had made me more vigilant, or perhaps I merely fell into the realm of hypochondriac medical student, but I couldn’t ignore this lump.
I set up an appointment with my doctor fully expecting a diagnosis of medical student neuroticism. Instead she agreed that it was …
Recently, Dr. Peter Kramer published an intriguing, well-written, but poorly reasoned and potentially dangerous “thought piece” in the New York Times. His article, “Why Doctors Need Stories,” contains several logical flaws and erroneous arguments, but the overarching concept is a classic straw man argument.
He creates a false and highly misleading notion of what …
One of the hardest parts about medical school for me has been the constant pursuit of approval. Having a pass/fail system during pre-clinical years helped ease things some, but there remains a personal desire to prove myself. In front of attendings, all I can focus on is performing my physical exam just right, presenting in the perfect manner, and nailing the assessment and plan. Unfortunately, my strong desire to look …
If I had to choose one theme that has stood out in the first weeks of medical school, it would be this: questions, questions, and more questions. In the first class on our first day of medical school, our professor set the tone by laying down the requirement that we ask a minimum of ten questions before the lecture was over. Based on my experience in large undergraduate lectures, where …
